


5

by unsubstitute



Category: Blake Shelton (Musician), Gwen Stefani - Fandom, Shefani, The Voice (US) RPF
Genre: F/M, Five Times
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-04
Updated: 2016-10-04
Packaged: 2018-08-19 12:17:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,151
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8207578
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unsubstitute/pseuds/unsubstitute
Summary: And I believe for everything there is a reason. And everything always in time will come. -no doubt





	

**Author's Note:**

> For Sarah.

1\. They met at an awards show in 2006. Blake was newly single after a divorce and a whirlwind romance with Miranda that fizzled out quickly. Gwen had been focusing on her career. She ended things with Gavin shortly before the wedding because the lying and cheating were just too much. Neither Gwen nor Blake were looking for a relationship, but their eyes met backstage at an awards show, and the connection was instant. They never looked back. Their 10 year anniversary is next year. They have 3 boys.

 

2\. They fell in love the day they met. Love at first sight, while she sang on stage and he sat in his big red chair. Hundreds of people in the room but she performed just for him. When she joined the Voice for real a few weeks later, they grew close quickly. They spent as much time together as possible, until inevitably someone would feel guilty and they'd agree to avoid each other for a few days. After they came about an inch away from kissing during top 10 week, they tried to create some distance. Meanwhile things began really deteriorating in their marriages, and then everything, their effort to put their feelings second and their spouses first, that all went to hell. The marriages blew up. When it happened, when the lies were exposed and the affairs came to light, Blake was Gwen'a first call, and she was his. People in each of their lives are always surprised, because Blake and Gwen both had always claimed they'd do anything to make marriage work. And yet there they each were, apparently walking away, giving up. But they were walking away for important reasons. And even though they'll never admit it, at least not to anyone outside the bedroom they now share, they maybe wouldn't have walked away so quickly, each maybe would've given the marriage a second chance, if it weren't for the other.

 

3\. They felt an instant connection. There was always something about the other person that they were so fascinated, so enamored with. Each of them would look for excuses to talk to the other, but both of them were nervous to get too close, for fear of revealing just how interested they really were. And they knew it was dangerous, being around each other, because they were trying to make their marriages work. Or anyway they were trying to ignore their marriages' problems. And it wouldn't do anyone any good, they figured, to make it all the more painful by falling for someone else, someone they couldn't have. But the marriages blew up anyway. And then, almost by chance, they discovered each other going through the same exact situation. They grew closer, leaning on each other, caring for each other, and ultimately holding each other. So trying to fix their marriages became trying to move on from marriages that were irrevocably broken. And moving on turned into happily ever after.

 

4\. Their first season together they had crushes. They told themselves that's all it was, that it was not a deeper, unexplainable connection.  Their second season together, the friendship they started to build the first year picked right back up where it left off. It was harder for them to ignore their feelings with every week that went by. But they had spouses at home. Well, they had spouses somewhere, not actually at home most of the time, but still, the spouses did exist. At the end of the second season, they exchanged email addresses. They emailed once a week through the holidays, then every other day, then everyday, and at some point they realized they were closer to each other than they were to the spouses they never saw. The third season Gwen was on the Voice, Blake's marriage had crumbled. He and his wife couldn't speak without shouting. Miranda got drunk one night and checked his phone while he was in the bathroom. And when she realized he was in love with someone else, she threw the phone at his head and told him he wasn't the only one who had been unfaithful. Gwen's marriage lasted a few months longer, even though she and Gavin were hardly speaking, and the one time that whole year they were intimate, she got through it by imagining someone bigger, taller, with a different accent. Gavin started coming home less and less. His tour would end but he'd stay on the road. She'd never know where he was, and she didn't care, truthfully, because she spent those nights on the phone with her best friend, a giant cowboy who was nicer, cuter, and more supportive than her husband had ever been. It wasn't until her fourth season that they got together.

 

5\. It was love at first sight. They both knew it. One night at the end of their first summer working together, they even admitted it. That was their first kiss. But they were married. And it didn't matter that they were married to people they didn't like quite as much as they liked each other. They were married. But it was love at first sight, and they were strong, but they weren't made of steel. So they agreed to be friends, because it was better than being nothing. A year later, they were both miserable in their marriages. Miranda had cheated but Blake was trying to give her a second chance, because he took that vow (and Gwen was unavailable) and Gavin was as absent as ever but he was the father of her children and Gwen always promised herself she'd have the perfect family her parents had. But being around Blake made it that much more difficult for Gwen, and being around Gwen made it that much more painful for Blake. They would catch each other staring, and when that happened their eyes would lock, and they would smile until someone had to look away. They drank too much at the wrap party that season. Neither of their spouses joined them, they never did these days. That was their second kiss. The show was cancelled after that. So Blake went back to Oklahoma and Gwen stayed in Beverly Hills and they thought about those two stolen kisses, each wondering if the other kept them in their memories. Time went on. Careers went on. Lives went on. Eventually Blake and Miranda split up. One too many cheating rumors. One too many drunken fights with words that couldn't be unsaid. But Gwen stayed with Gavin until the end. Until he died in a car crash at the age of 56 with a girl half his age and a baggy of white powder by his side. Blake and Gwen met again twelve years after their first kiss, in 2026. It was an awards show, and it was love at first sight all over again. That was their third kiss.


End file.
